Young soldier's family has hope for his dream

More than 50 years after an Irish immigrant in the U.S. Army died in the Korean War, he may be posthumously awarded citizenship.

May 27, 2002|By Stanley Ziemba, Tribune staff reporter.

As an Army private serving in Korea, Michael Fitzpatrick loved the United States so much that the Irish immigrant was moved to write his sister in Chicago about the beauty of U.S. warplanes streaking across the sky.

But Fitzpatrick, who was drafted into the armed forces two years after setting foot on U.S. soil, never realized his dream of citizenship. His application was only part way through a five-year process when the 23-year-old medic died in action on Aug. 18, 1951, near the city of Inchon.

When his remains arrived at Union Station nearly a year later, an Army sergeant told his 26-year-old sister that regulations precluded military funerals for non-citizens.

"He simply handed me an American flag, gave me a salute and that was it," said Fitzpatrick's sister, Mary Doody, who immigrated to Chicago from Ireland in the late 1940s and now lives in southwest suburban Orland Park.

Fifty years later, Fitzpatrick's wish to become a citizen and his sister's desire to give him the military funeral honors accorded veterans may come true.

A bill making its way through Congress would allow family members of foreign-born U.S. military personnel who died in the service of their adopted homeland to petition the U.S. attorney general for posthumous citizenship.

Although the bill is backed by such influential veterans groups as the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, getting it through Congress has been a slow process, Doody said.

"We were hoping that it would be passed and signed into law by this Memorial Day," she said. "But because the Congress has been busy with issues stemming from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it seems like it has been put on the back burner."

Doody, along with her son, Tim Doody, a Chicago lawyer, has been lobbying for passage.

"I would die a happy woman if that happens," said the 77-year-old Doody. "Becoming a citizen was something he wanted from the day he arrived in America in 1947," Doody said. "Back then, however, you had to wait two years before declaring your intention of becoming a citizen and another three years to complete the process, even if you were drafted. He made his declaration. He just didn't have enough time to see it through."

The only way an individual can obtain posthumous citizenship now is through an act of Congress.

Under the proposed Posthumous Citizenship Recovery Act, introduced last year in the House by Rep. Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) and in the Senate by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), relatives of non-citizen U.S. residents who died on the battlefield or as a result of wounds inflicted while serving in the U.S. armed forces would have two years to petition the Justice Department for citizenship on behalf of their kin.

The House and the Senate have moved versions of the bill to their Judiciary Committees for consideration. No hearing dates have been set.

A similar law passed in 1989 expired in 1992. Granting citizenship to foreign-born U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force personnel, Meehan said, is the least the nation can do to honor "the immigrants who have served honorably and heroically in our armed forces.

"Sadly, some of these true patriots did not live to see their dream fulfilled," Meehan said. "This bill would make their dream a reality."

No one knows how many men and women would be eligible for posthumous citizenship, said Bridger McGaw, Meehan's press secretary, who has researched the subject.

Calculating the number is difficult, he said, because 16 million to 18 million records of Army and Air Force personnel were destroyed when warehouses at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis burned in 1973.

McGaw estimated 24,000 non-citizens serve on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, 1.8 percent of all military personnel. About 125,000 enlisted or were drafted during World War II.

"The number of individuals who would be eligible has to be in the thousands," McGaw said. "Conceivably, even someone who immigrated to America and fought and died in the Revolutionary War would be eligible if his descendants filed a petition."

Meehan said he introduced the bill at the urging of a Massachusetts chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic fraternal organization. The group asked that he look into obtaining citizenship for some 30 Irish immigrants, including Fitzpatrick.

The Doodys became involved in lobbying for the legislation after Mary Doody attended a New York City gathering last year of the families of immigrant Irish veterans who had served in the U.S. armed forces.

"This bill will give relatives of the deceased veterans some peace of mind that their loved ones died with the honorable mantle of American citizenship," Tim Doody said.

In the last several weeks, more than six-dozen U.S. representatives, including seven from Illinois, have signed on as co-sponsors of Meehan's bill. Three senators, including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have signed on as co-sponsors of the Schumer bill. The Doodys hope that means the movement is starting to pick up steam.

"When it does become law and we get my brother's citizenship papers, the first thing I want to do is to have a veterans group perform military honors at my brother's grave," Mary Doody said.

"Back in 1952, when we laid him to rest in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (in southwest suburban Worth), ... there were no Army pallbearers to carry his coffin, no 21-gun salute, no one to play taps on a bugle over his grave," Doody said, fighting back tears.

"A veterans group from the southwest suburbs already has offered to do that, even before the law is passed, but I won't feel right about it until I have those citizenship papers in my hand."